t did not pass without
a good deal of popular criticism in Germany, but nearly all Germans
were at one with the Emperor in his view of the proper sphere for
womanly activities.

The Emperor's domestic life for the last two or three years, including
the early months of the present year, have passed without special
cause of interest or excitement, if we except the visit he and the
Empress made to London in May, 1911, to be present at the unveiling of
Queen Victoria's statue, and the announcement he was able to make a
few months ago that his only daughter, Princess Victoria Louise, had
become engaged to Prince Ernest August, Duke of Cumberland, the still
persisting claimant to the Kingdom of Hannover, absorbed by Prussia in
1866. The visit to London lasted only five days and produced no
incident particularly worthy of record. The engagement of Princess
Victoria Louise, while generally believed to be a love-match,
possesses also political significance for Germany, not indeed as
putting an end to the claim of the Duke of Cumberland, but as
practically effecting a reconciliation between the Hohenzollerns and
Guelphs. The young Duke of Brunswick had already implicitly renounced
his claim to Hannover by entering the German army and taking the oath
of allegiance to the Emperor as War Lord, so that, when his father
dies, the Guelph claim to Hannover will die with him.

It is difficult to determine whether the Government's abandonment of
its design to amend the Prussian franchise system in 1910, its
submissive attitude towards the Pope's Borromeo Encyclical in 1911,
the rapid rise in food prices which marked both years, or finally, the
Emperor's failure to secure a slice of Morocco for Germany had most
antagonizing effect on German popular feeling; but whatever the cause,
the general elections of January, 1912, proved a tremendous Socialist
victory, which must have been, and still remains, gall and wormwood to
the Emperor. Notwithstanding official efforts, over one-third of the
votes polled at the first ballots went for Social Democratic
candidates. The number of seats thus obtained was 64, and this number,
after the second ballots, rose to 110, thus making the Socialist party
numerically the strongest in the Reichstag. Up to the present,
however, Herr Bebel and his cohorts appear to be happy in possessing
power rather than in using it.

Before completing the Emperor's domestic chronicle of more recent
years, a few lines may b